1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to self-healing communications networks and more specifically to the avoidance of traffic congestion during a fault restoration process.
2. Description of the Related Art
In conventional self-healing communications networks where a network node broadcasts a fault reservation message to adjacent nodes in response to the occurrence of a failure in a route terminating at the node, control messages are exchanged between nodes to secure a bandwidth for a new route. The network is thus flooded with such messages. One example of such networks is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,235,599 issued to Yasuyo Nishimura et al and assigned to the same assignee as the present invention. Because of the meshed network topology, some of the propagating messages may converge to node, causing a traffic congestion which could lead to a prolonged restoration process.